As I said in my presentation, there's a lot of obscurity about what's going on there, partially because the government has decided to keep the information outside of public scrutiny.
But there are certain reports coming in, including the one I have about some of the recent experiences over the last six months of the PRTs and the national solidarity program: lack of genuine community participation; no real participation by women; village committees are held by the same powerful, influential, and relatively well-off persons who are in charge of these villages; continue with the status quo; monitoring and evaluation are non-existent; a negative impact on social capital; exacerbate strife and disunity—It goes on and on. It's based on a series of interviews that have been conducted in the Kandahar region over the last six months, and it's very worrying.
The conclusion is that it's not the way to go. The Canadian military, as well as other militaries, is very well trained to perform certain tasks but not in social and economic reconstruction. It has never been done successfully.
This is the first move. It has to move. It has to shift from an emphasis on the PRTs and what they call the “quick impact”. There's no quick impact. The quick impact is negative, so why do you continue? It should be mandated to CIDA and some of its partners through the approach they've learned on how to do social development.
You don't arrive there on a Monday morning, convene three people in a village, ask them in a half-hour session what the priorities are and what they're going to do, and then leave $5,000. It's not the way to do it. It's not the way to go.
It should be changed and modified, going back to the lessons learned and the more traditional practices of development and long-term reconstruction. Is it easy? No, it's not easy. It's very difficult. Is it dangerous? Yes, it's very dangerous.
It's not going to be possible unless there are political negotiations to calm down the strife and calm down the fighting to get at least a part of the Taliban or the neo-Taliban to a negotiating position. If we do that, it will be like Mozambique and other situations, where the situation changed after a very tough and bloody civil war. It didn't change in one week, and it didn't change by trying to kill the insurgents and by trying to do a quick-fix approach.
You have money. You need to spend it, and you'll be happy and satisfied. But look behind it.